It's Only Wednesday If You Let It.

I've been living in a fantasy world.  I'm a dupe, a mark, a sucker, a rube.  Yesterday I mentioned that I chained my saddle to my bike to keep people from stealing it, but a savvy commenter informs me that I've fallen victim to the most insidious form of "hipster bullshit:"

Anonymous said...

Only hipsters believe in those bike chain seat leashes. A 2$ flathead screwdriver and one good torque = bye bye saddle&post and silly illusions. Ppl and their bullshit they believe

March 26, 2014 at 2:13 AM

I think my favorite thing about the Internet is that something as simple as putting a chain on your saddle can work people up into Ignatius P. Reilly levels of indignation and disgust.  Hey, we all know there's no defense against an expertly-wielded screwdriver.  In the right hands, a screwdriver is all it takes to steal a luxury automobile, hijack a commercial airliner, or become a prison kingpin.  Still, which is the sillier illusion?  That the chain is going to keep someone from stealing my saddle, or that someone would even want the filthy thing enough to bother?  Here it is in all its worn, ass sweat-stained glory:

(This is what backpacks do to saddle noses, and what a hot crotch does to leather and foam.)

Perhaps I take too favorable a view of humanity, but I'm fairly confident that, between the sorry condition of this lump and the added inconvenience of having to pry open a chain to get it, 99.9% of the population is going to pass this by--though I admit that, together with the brand-name seatpost, it could present a temptation too difficult to resist:

("Wait, is that a Nashbar seatpost?  Fetch me the angle grinder!")

Actually, you don't even need to undo the chain to get the seatpost.  Technically.  But yeah, I think it's enough to keep people honest, and if someone really wants this crappy frumunda perch that badly they can go ahead and take it.  I've got boxes of this shit at home.  (Though I'd be annoyed if they took the seatpost clamp too.  That's crossing the line.)

As for the bit about "hipsters," if this is some sort of new hipster affectation that's news to me.  I've never seen a "hipster" use the chain trick, and in fact I don't think there are even any hipsters left in New York.  They all seem to have either graduated to full-fledged yuppies, or else they've been priced out by their peers and forced to move to other, less competitive cities.  Meanwhile, I don't even know if they've come up with a name for the latest wave of young white transplant aspirants yet.  They're definitely not the hipsters of ten years ago.  I think they're "normcore" or something.  Who even knows at this point?  At any rate, I can assure you none of them are chaining their saddles to their bikes.  In fact, I'm pretty sure the normcore set is into Halfbikes now:

(Idiot.)

Speaking of the Halfbike, a commenter on the post in which I mentioned it shared the following:

I actually forwarded that to the "inventors" of the Halfbike, and I have yet to receive a reply.

Speaking of emails, here's one I got just a few minutes ago:

Hello,

We are interested in advertising on your websites. We just launched a 
new product called
No Bush Lotion. You can see it at 
http://www.kingsupplements.com/nobush.html.
The product helps reduce the appearance of body hair and is marketed
towards athletes of all kind. If you would like to make more money with 
your blog please contact me and we can work out a deal.

Intrigued, I followed the link, and thus entered the strange world of pubic hair minimizer cream for men:

I'll have you know that I have received no remuneration from No Bush.  In fact, I haven't even replied to the email.  Hey, I'm the kind of sucker who chains his saddle to his bike, right?  Similarly, if it involves both cycling and pubes, you can be fairly sure I'm going to mention it for free.

By the way, No Bush Lotion was not tested on bunny rabbits, nor did any of the bunny rabbits it wasn't tested on develop any malignant tumors.  (At least, I'm assuming that's the case, since it doesn't say otherwise on the No Bush website.)  So you can stop with your spurious accusations.

(What a bunny rabbit would look like if it was treated with No Bush, which it wasn't, at least as far as I know.)

As for what's actually in No Bush, I have no idea, but it would be pretty hilarious if it triggered positive results in doping tests:

("It was either tainted meat or my bush-zorching cream, take your pick.")

Speaking of hairless pubic mounds, meet the Aeroclam!


 My favorite is the part where the disembodied hands are gently working the clam:

Though I also liked the part where the same disembodied hands fumble with the droopy, frayed saddlebag:

Wow.  That's a lot of crotch-fondling innuendo, even for a video made by New Zealanders.

Anyway, as a wise man once said, you can have a droopy, frayed bag, or you can have a smooth clam, but you can't have both.

And either way, be careful running your chain through it.

Springtime For Cyclist: When the Equinox Gets Vernal, the Fred Gets Anal

As winter reluctantly releases the ball gag from our mouth, I find myself returning to the bikes with the skinny tires and the pedals requiring shoes you can't walk in (Fredliness is a form of ball-gaggery, I suppose), which means I can update those of you who care on the Brooks Cambium saddle:

(Matching your saddle and your bar tape is for "woosies.")

Here's a closer look:

And here's a really close look:

And here is a pair of hard nipples:

If you recall, I immediately found the Cambium to be exceedingly comfortable, though around January I noticed it was creaking a little bit.  Specifically, it would sort of squeak if I shimmied my scranus towards the saddle's nose while climbing.  While the sound was mildly annoying, it was only occasional, and it was nowhere near as irritating as comments like this:

Mario's Albino Tadpole said...

Snob..no wonder you sucked at racing of the bicycles. Try shifting your scanus back when climbing instead of forward. You will make better use of your glutes and hamstrings that way. Only go on the rivet when you want to get low and aero.

JANUARY 3, 2014 AT 7:57 PM 

Nonsense.  Climbing is like intercourse: sometimes you need to change positions.  You don't just park your scranus in one spot and grind away.  Whether you're talking about your saddle or your bed, at various times you should be fore, aft, or even out of it altogether.  And as for sucking at the racing of bicycles, I definitely sucked, but it was for a completely different set of reasons, since there's virtually no climbing in the various local New York City race series, yet I managed to completely blow anyway.

Plus, I hold the all-time record for ascending Mont Ventoux, so I think I know what I'm talking about.

Worst of all though was the Unsolicited Creak Advice, which is perhaps the most regrettable aspect of bike dorkdom in the Internet age.  "Maybe it's not your saddle.  Have you tried greasing the chainring bolt that's second from your crank arm going clockwise?"  Look.  I know when my saddle's creaking, and I also know a thing or two about chasing creaks.  In fact, I don't just chase them.  I stalk them.  Sometimes you need to take the whole bike apart.  Other times, you ignore the creak for a few weeks so it thinks you don't care, but then, when the creak least expects it, BAM!  You figure it out mid-ride and then silence that shit immediately with a surgical lube strike.

This is me when I'm hunting down a creak:

(Errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to lube a bottom bracket.)

I love the smell of Simple Green in the morning, etc. and so forth.

ANYWAY, the point of all this is that I was able to determine that my flabby thighs were causing the rubber underside of the saddle to rub the rails, thus producing a rubbery squeak, which I confirmed by applying some electrical tape between the two surfaces (the rails and saddle shell, not my thighs):

As of my last ride it was as quiet as can be, and while there's certainly a more elegant solution (hint: Brooks x BSNYC velvet "collabo" bumpers "droppings" soon at $75 a pop), I'll probably just leave it that way until my liposuction appointment.

In the meantime, the saddle is extremely comfortable, happily silent, and well in line with my personal bicycle aesthetic, which is that of a fading Fred gradually wilting into a retrogrouch.  Furthermore, I would happily put a Cambium on each and every one of my bicycles, if only I weren't so goddamn lazy.

In other news, there has been much talk of lumens this week, and clearly it's in the zeitgeist because Mission Bicycle have launched a Kickstarter for a reflective bicycle called...the Lumen:



And thus, with the advent of a dedicated night bicycle, "peak specificity" was reached, and the entire cycling universe contracted in a "big crunch," at which point all marketing segments were completely abandoned and everybody started selling and riding pennyfarthings:

Which was terrible news for the inventors of the Cogly cog-flosser:


This is an indispensable invention for people who haven't yet figured out that, if you're going to clean your cassette, you should first take the extra five seconds to remove the wheel:

(Oh come on, who even does that?)

Or even just the extra three seconds to shift the chain out of the way.

I'm not even going to mention removing the cassette from the hub, because that would probably make a potential Cogly customer's head explode.

By the way, if you didn't know any better, you might think the Cogly is a heavy-duty dental floss pick designed for Englishmen:

(Bike industry entrepreneurs, or British dentists?  Because the whole "British people have bad teeth" thing never gets old.)

And for this they want $12,500--which, according to the video, will mostly go towards paying for the packaging:

Because if there's one thing the world needs, it's more packaging.

NAHBS: Niches All Have Been Sold

(A misshapen lump at this year's NAHBS, via Friday's comments.)

Back in 2005 or thereabouts, a man with a kilt and a dream launched a custom bicycle show.  He called it the "North American Handmade Bicycle Show." Thanks to the Internet, pictures of these bicycles went "viral," and they worked desk-bound Freds and other bike dorks up into a frothy lather.  Orders were placed, queues for the top builders formed, and within a few years we were in the throes of a custom bike boom and the NAHBS grew into the builders' pimp and the world's most preeminent bike show in the entire universe.

So what happened?

This past weekend, in Charlotte (it's in one of the Carolinas or something) hosted the [insert number here]th NAHBS, and from what I can tell nobody really paid any attention.  Well, okay, the usual nerds got media passes and took pictures (I'm looking at you, James Huang), but whither the ripples through the bike world you used to feel around showtime?  Were you hovering over your keyboard for the those first bike nerd media updates?  At its peak, the NAHBS truly captured the cycling zeitgeist.  Remember when "townies" were a big thing, and it was all over-wrought city bikes?  Remember when the fixie craze hit, and builders all reminded you what a proper track racing bike looked like?  29er, 650b, the resurgence of steel...all the cycling trends of the past ten years that we now take for granted can arguably trace their coalescence to the North American Handmade Bicycle Show.

Alas, those days are behind us.  Granted, I didn't go to this year's show, and in fact I've only ever been to one (1) NAHBS, and that was Austin 2011.  Even so, I'd argue that those of us who don't go have the most insight, since we're the regular schmucks to whom all this stuff ultimately trickles down.  When the NAHBS began I was absolutely one of those desk-bound bike dorks, drooling all over stacks of work I wasn't doing and dreaming of one day owning some gaudy lugged overpainted Fred Chariot or some city bike I'd never lock up ever ever ever because it was way too fancy.  In short, I'm Every Bike Dork, and I want to know where the magic went, goddamn it!

I blame the bike industry.  When NAHBS started you couldn't walk into a bike shop and buy, say, a classy townie or an urban fixie.  Now, though, the big companies are ON IT and there's no type of bicycle so arcane you can't check a box and order it through QBP.  There are no niches left for the custom builders to fill!  I mean, gravel bikes, for fuck's sake!  It's a niche within a niche within a niche, yet there are 20 off-the-rack models you've got to wade through before you'd even think of ordering one from a builder--and if you do, by the time it's finished half the shit on it is going to be obsolete.

If anything, NAHBS now seems to be the place where the crabon companies unveil their new bits, and where the mainstream companies can go to get ideas for creative electronic shifter cable routing.

Also, it was in Charlotte, so there's that.*

*[Disclaimer: I have never been to Charlotte.]

Meanwhile, all the entrepreneurship seems to have shifted over to Kickstarter--which is not necessarily a good thing.  At least NAHBS is still full of bikes you'd give your left nut or labia to ride, whereas Kickstarter is rancid with this sort of nonsense:

Dear Bike Snob,

We are a team of young architects and avid cyclists keen on alternative transport systems. We are excited to present you our latest project - Halfbike, a very compact and light vehicle that may redefine the way we move around the city.

Behold...this piece of shit!

 

This stupid idiotic remedial adult tricycle proves two things: 1) Humankind will stop at nothing to fuck up and unravel the nearly perfect piece of engineering that is the safety bicycle; and 2) Humankind is disgusting and selfish, because people all over the world are starving, yet we've given the people responsible for this moronic exercise almost $25 thousand so far:

They should change the name from "Halfbike" to "Hopeless Symbol of Misanthropy and Despair Bike."

Penultimately, Honda has recalled almost a million minivans:

From my admittedly non-scientific observations over the years, I have determined that Ultra-Orthodox Jews freaking love Honda Odysseys, which means this recall will be the biggest blow to their freedom to drive since the invention of Shabbat.

Lastly, in the comments on Friday's post, someone left this:

Hmm, no women's leaderboard:

Musta been a real sausage fest.

Today's Wednesday Is Made From 100% Reclaimed Water Tower Wood

Yesterday I tried that Fly6 camera again, and on the way home I figured I'd try it on the front of the bike for a change:

I had to put it upside-down in order to account for the fork angle, and I wouldn't use it at night because few things annoy me more than "light salmon" (people who use red lights up front or vice-versa), but otherwise it worked fine, because why wouldn't it?

One or two commenters yesterday expressed a wish to see actual moving footage, and once I've wrapped my tiny mind around how to edit and upload short videos maybe I'll do that, but in the meantime I can assure you that you're not missing anything.  For example, the most exciting thing that happened to me on my return trip was that I dropped a bag of chips:

They fell out of the pocket of my Inspector Gadget jacket, forcing me to turn around and rescue them from the wheels of an approaching Subaru.

Then, when I got home, the cat used the Fly6 to take a "selfie:"

Coincidentally, this is also the very first thing I see every morning, which is why I'm slowly unraveling.

By the way, what with the Internet age and the global appropriation of "messenger culture," "urban cycling," and all the rest of it, there is only one (1) remaining style of bicycle that is (at least as far as I know) unique to New York City, and that is the food delivery bike:

New York City food delivery bikes tend to be mountain bikes or hybrids, and the GT "triple triangle" frame is especially coveted.  The extra-high "cat in heat" fender and taped frame are typical hallmarks, but this particular bike had a couple of interesting features.  Firstly, it had a side-pull brake conversion in the rear:

And no front brake at all in the front:

I may sound like I'm being catty (again with the cats?) but I'm totally not, because again I think these bikes are probably the last remaining bit of cycling uniqueness in New York City.  Even our bike share bikes are the same as everyone else's (apart from the sponsor):

(Same bike, different bank.)

There was a time when a bike with super-narrow handlebars and a front Aerospoke was a uniquely New York bike, but that was many years ago, and the style has since gone global and is now pretty much completely out of style--though you do still see it in barf-worthy promotional videos:


Patagonia Bowery Surf Shop NYC from Indoek on Vimeo.

Look at those bars!  I've written with pens longer than that.  Seriously, what year is this?!?

Though I guess you need bars that narrow to clear those bollards at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge:

Couldn't be more than five feet, after all.

Still, if your handlebars are shorter than your brake lever, get longer handlebars:

Wait, why am I even saying this?  Nobody does this anymore except for him.  Take his friend, John the Baptist, for example:

He rides a skateboard:

And what about his other friend, Jason Schwartzman?

He also rides a skateboard--but it's a tiny skateboard, which has a secondary use as a doorstop:

And together, they all work at the Patagonia store, which is what this video is promoting:

I'm old, so this is incredibly fucking depressing.  See the black awning currently shielding the John Vulvanus store?  Well, that was once CBGBs, which makes the Patagonia store what was, in my day, the "CBGB Record Canteen:"

(I could not for the life of me find a photo of the CBGB Record Canteen, so here's an older picture without it.)

Look, I know things can't stay the same, and admittedly the Record Canteen was a poor business model.  See, it was foolish to buy a record before a show, since if you brought it inside it would get smashed.  And while theoretically you could always buy a record after the show, the fact is that when your ears are ringing that loudly it's hard to think about buying records.  It's kind of like shopping for wine with a hangover, or browsing the Nashbar closeouts after a 140-mile "epic."  Sure, if you're really far gone you may be up for it, but most people just wanna go to bed.

Now, though, you can go to that same storefront and buy a surfboard from "reclaimed water tower wood:"

And they'll put your surfwax made by a husband-and-wife team in Red Hook in an artisanal reusable shopping bag:

Then after work they'll go surfing:

And camp out on a rooftop:

Inside a ready-made designer teepee:

Yeah, seriously:

No wonder Spike Lee is so angry.

Speaking of the globalization of pretty much everything, the New York Times is onto fat bikes now, which means random people at work are going to start asking you about them:

Where trails are too soft for regular mountain bikes, or too sparse to protect skiers from subsurface obstacles, fat bikes are filling a gap. Riders do well on mixed terrain, including on trails where the snow is too thin for skiing and on south-facing pitches where dirt is exposed during a low-snow winter. “It’s opening a new way to be outdoors,” Chris Estrem, a Ketchum physical therapist, backcountry skier and world bicycle traveler, said. “It’s made me a better mountain biker. I want to ride it all the time. I love it.”

Apparently, they're taking off in Idaho because there hasn't been enough snow to ski.  Meanwhile, here in New York we need them this winter because there's too much snow, which means the fat bike is now the official bike of climate change, and thus the final harbinger of the apocalypse.

Who'd 'a thunk it...

Cue the "Jaws" theme, because the Shark is coming, and it wants a piece of your ass.

In the vast world of cycling, from advocacy to professional racing to marketing to handmade bicycle shows to whatever else, there is but one breaking story that overshadows all others, and it's that, finally, someone has invented a saddle that goes inside your ass:

(Via @mtbkrdave)

Is that what you think it is?  Yes, it is.  It's a dorsal fin that goes right up the jacksie, essentially splitting you open so as to improve your weight distribution somehow:

New to the Essax saddle line, the 'Shark' features a central fin at the rear of the saddle, which assists the rider in evenly spreading their weight on the sit bones.

(White seems like a bad color choice for something that goes between your ass cheeks.)

Some of you might find this shocking, but as far as I'm concerned this saddle is the inevitable culmination of decades of dubious bicycle "innovation" and marketing.  Thousand-dollar wheelsets, "beefy" bottom brackets, robust thru-axles, disc brakes, proprietary gravel bikes...all of this was merely a prelude, a romantic candlelight dinner, a way of softening you up and bending you over so that the bicycle industry can finally take you home and convince you to "do it in the butt."

Are you having trouble finding that perfect saddle?  Is everything you try uncomfortable?  Well, as it turns out, the problem with all of them is that they don't go inside of you:

"So many of us sit twisted on our saddles, I've heard of people going through ten different saddles and still not being satisfied with their seating position..."

In other words, until now cycling has been a poor substitute for anal play, but now you no longer have to choose between the two, which if nothing else is going to save a lot of people a great deal of time.

By the way, I'd like to congratulate myself for predicting the "clipless saddle" nearly five years ago, though I admit the mechanics work differently than I'd envisioned.

Anyway, now that the bike industry has plied you with wine, taken you home, sat you down on the leather sofa, cued up the Barry White, and popped the ass question, you're probably wondering one thing: "Does it hurt?"  No, of course not, baby.  It feels great--just as long as you do what I say:

Is it uncomfortable?

The fin seems at first sight an aggressive element that will hurt us when we are pedaling. But this is not like this, if the rider is well positioned on the saddle the fin is imperceptible. If we feel the fin than we know that we are not well seated on the asddle! Than we know we have moved away from our optimal point of support, this is the kinesthetic value of the SHARK.

By the way, did you notice that typo?  That's right there on the manufacturer's website, and it's a Freudian slip that shows exactly what's on their mind:

Also, there's "much interest in England:"

Somehow I'm not surprised.

And if you've still got any reservations about sitting on this thing, you shouldn't, because it was invented by "a great mind" in "the cycle fitting world:"

"On first looks it's quite startling," added ICS organiser Phil Cavell. "But Iriberri is too great a mind in the cycle fitting world to ignore, it's a interesting idea."

Along with coaching, "cycle fitting" is perhaps the biggest racket going in the cycling world, and practitioners of both generally occupy a rung on the societal ladder between palm readers and pimps.  I'd never heard of this Jon Iriberri character, but I looked him up, and I do agree he's got a lot of great ideas about bike fit, though most if not all of them involve the butt.  For example, here he is subjecting someone to what looks to be some sort of hydraulic ass-derrick:

Here he is looking perplexed at a typical racing saddle and wondering how he can modify it to get it in the butt:

("I suppose I could remove it altogether and just leave the seatpost, but then I'd have nothing to sell.")

And here he is preparing to retrieve an early prototype:

In any case, I predict this saddle is going to be a huge hit, especially with triathletes:

Maybe the fin will keep them from falling off their bikes.